Daily Remarks

We went to the McDonald’s in Wilcox Arizona over the weekend and tried to get a drink, just a drink. It took over 15 minutes just to get a drink. There was at least 8 people working and they weren’t that busy. The counter was staffed with one person who was at the cash register. She was taking orders and putting the tickets to the side for the rest of the staff to fill. The rest of the staff was running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I can’t believe how long it took. I didn’t even order any food. I know McDonald’s is a franchise and they have specific ways of handling things so that the food gets out quickly, but not this time. So much for fast food. Has this ever happened to you?

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A customer walks into the store and they get on the phone while you are trying to help them. The hold up their index finger to indicate that they need a moment and that they are more important than you are. We try to provide good customer service, but when someone does this we walk away and let them come to us when they need further help. I don’t have time to stand around and wait for someone to have a conversation with someone else while I am trying to help them. It is just rude and my attitude towards them changes. If you walk in a store and ask for help and you and I are in the middle of a conversation and you take a call and proceed to have a lengthy conversation with the person on the phone you don’t deserve my help. The right thing to do would be to say to the person on the phone I will get back to you or put the call through to voice mail. Has this ever happened to you?

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The technician calls a customer and leaves a detailed message so that they understand what is going on with their equipment. The customer doesn’t listen to the message and calls right back and asks what our diagnosis is. I always listen to the message when someone calls because it gives me time to digest the information. After listening to the message I call back if I have questions or to make a judgment call on which way I would like to proceed on the work to be done. I know everyone is in a hurry in today’s society, but I took the time to leave a message so listen to it please before calling back so that you don’t waste me time. Has this ever happened to you?

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I really hate it when customers call and expect that you know who they are. I would say 9 times out of 10 they call and start talking about their service to the tech on the phone and the tech has no idea who they are or what they are talking about. You have to kindly stop the customer and ask who they are so that you can direct them to the correct technician. Not everyone in the office knows who the customer is or what their specific needs are. I would never assume that the person on the other end of the line knows who I am unless it is my wife or my mother. It isn’t proper phone etiquette to not say who you are. Has this ever happened to you or have you ever done this to the person on the other end of the phone?

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I called COX cable to come out and setup some network wiring in my house for their internet service. I explained to COX cable that I needed 2 wall jacks in my house at opposite sides of the house. COX cable asked if I had an attic space and I do, so I said yes. They said they could do the job for $69.90.

Scheduled First Time
COX gave me 3 schedule times to setup the wiring and I picked the afternoon between 1:00 and 3:00. You have to give them a window and I can understand that that because their other jobs may run over. Well the time came for them to show up and they didn’t show up or call until 4:00 even though they were scheduled between 1:00 and 3:00. They called at 4:00 and said that they couldn’t do the job in the afternoon because it would be too hot in the attic. I asked why the phone person didn’t say that at the time I scheduled the appointment and she said that sales didn’t know about the heat problems in the middle of the day.

Rescheduled
I tried to reschedule for the following day, but they said they didn’t have availability until after the 4th of July Holiday. So 4 days later was the earliest they could come out. I wasn’t happy about the reschedule, but things happen. COX came out on Wednesday at the scheduled time in the morning so the heat wasn’t too extreme in the attic for them to do the wiring. The technician from COX showed up at the house to do the wiring. I showed the tech around the house so that the tech could see what needed to be done. The tech then told me that he didn’t believe that COX did that kind of work. The tech stepped outside to call COX and spoke with them. The tech came back in the house and told me that COX couldn’t do the work and I would have to contact a wiring company. I was dumbfounded at that moment. I said ok and the tech left.

Recap
So to recap, I scheduled with COX cable twice, they were late on the first scheduled time. I explained the job to them twice on the phone and they understood what needed to be done. They sent a technician out and wouldn’t do the job. So basically they don’t communicate between departments and promise things that they don’t do. Awesome!

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A customer purchases an item over the internet. The order is over $250 so we give them free shipping. They get the item and don’t like it so they want to return it. Should the customer be responsible for the original shipping since they didn’t keep the item? What do you think? The original shipping was $4.95 which is not a lot, but why should the vendor eat the shipping?

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A customer brought in a computer to have us work on. Simple task, just put in a secondary hard drive and hookup a fan to the motherboard. Well we installed the hard drive and tried setting it up in Windows XP, but it would only see the drive as a 128 gig hard drive. The hard drive we were installing was a 400 gig hard drive. Well we realized that the Windows had never been updated so that was causing the problem. So we updated all of the service packs 1, 2, and 3 and installed the hard drive and it worked fine. We realized that the primary drive was not being seen by the system correctly, (this is where it goes bad) so we repartitioned the hard drive to the correct size. The hard drive was a 300 gig and it was showing as 128 gigs so we figured it needed to be corrected. The partition software gave an error at the end of the repartitioning. Needless to say the system didn’t load, but we were able to save the data and reload the OS. Took us 4 hours and we made a whole $25. Should have been a 15 minute job. Sometimes no good deed shall go unpunished. The customer is happy so it all worked out in the end.

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I really hate it when people call me and they are talking to someone else when I answer the phone. I pickup the phone and I hear them talking to whoever about whatever when they should be paying attention to who they called. This is just being discourteous. I basically give it about 2 seconds then I hang up. If they feel it is important to talk to one of us at the store they can call back. How do you handle this?

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A customer came in with a computer that was crushed. The customer fell down with the computer in his hands and he landed on the computer. We just rebuilt the computer 2 weeks before. He requested that we look at it and see what we could do. So we check it in and diagnose the computer. The case is destroyed and the motherboard is damaged. The customer is expecting warranty repair on the system because he told me as much. I told him that we would look at the computer and see what the problems are. He is a very good customer that we have been doing business with for along time. My choices are call him and tell him all of the problems with the pc and make him pay for everything and lose him as a customer or take care of the motherboard under warranty and charge him for the labor and the case and keep him as a customer. I will be going with option 2, but what would you do? Better to break even on it and keep him as a customer than to lose any future business.

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A customer actually came in the store and tried to claim their equipment that they left with us 9 months ago for service. We looked back at the notes and we had called them every month for 3 months straight. They never called us back. We left numerous messages. Our policy which is on the wall and is also on our service tickets states that equipment left with us gets donated or recycled after 30 days. We didn’t discard the equipment until the 4th month just to be sure. The laptop which the customer left was 7 years old and it would have cost more to repair than it was worth. We were very nice about it and told them that the equipment had been discarded according to our policies. The customer then became extremely angry and used a few choice words. We just kept repeating what the policy states and that we tried to contact them. We finally had to ask them to leave because they were becoming verbally abusive. I personally wouldn’t even consider getting my equipment back after that period of time. What do you think?

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